Thursday, March 27, 2008

Weekly Review March 2nd to March 8th

This week has seen several developments in theory, including some in depth reexaminations.

Role in the System

Over at Story Games, Karl Bergman presents a way to look at how player's interact with the system. Specifically, players can adopt a specific role not as a character, but within the operation of the game itself, something he terms an actor. One example he presents is situational competitiveness: where neither characters nor players compete overall, but at certain times players are encouraged to adopt a competitive role.

Fictional Positioning

Chris Chinn goes into some detail examining the concept of fictional positioning. By this he means the use of fictional logic in influencing what happens during the game. For example, having a weapon before you could attack with it or having a reason to be in a corridor to overhear a critical conversation. He suggests this is one of the pillars upon which RPGs operate, but is often ignored next to mechanics. In particular he argues attention is only drawn to it when either it or the mechanics go wrong.

Objects and Their Functions

Gabor Koszper returns to his work on functions, expanding on how different objects in play can produce different function in how they affect the people playing the game. He suggests that a functional break-down of fictional and mechanical elements can be very useful, especially because it leads naturally to examining both the intentions and effects of how we influence each other during play.